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Thursday, September 1, 2016

Must-read if you are into foundations of economic and political theory. Useful even if you are not, since Jon Hellevig debunks a lot of the myths about capitalism, neoliberalism, liberalism, socialism and communism in advancing his argument for a democratic competitive economy.

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For anyone who wants a quick read, I thought this was good. Taken from one of the links.

Together with those earned competitive advantages, the Western countries are also losing their unfair competitive advantage – that of being colonial powers that have exploited the rest of the world. And there’s the rub; the assault on Russia is precisely about the West’s attempt to hold onto this last bastion of advantage over the world: the military hegemony. To uphold it, or to recreate it in a more absolute fashion than ever, the West must conquer Russia. If Russia falls, then the rest of the free world would succumb as well.

In a free world, the economies of the Western countries will gradually shrink as the rest of the world emerges. This decline is what the increasingly belligerent Western elite wants to reverse with an attempt to establish world hegemony, a new colonial order.

Jon Hellevig is a business consultant and political observer. He is the co-editor and co-author of Putin’s New Russia and several books on philosophy and political and social sciences

It is the Western central bank regulations and other means of central planning of the economy and all life by the Western governments that have led to unfair practices and outright corruption which favors a few well-connected banks, corporations and individuals. There is wide and motivated outrage for how the Western central banks have been aiding banks and publicly listed corporations leading to spectacular unearned personal gains by the bankers and executives in form of bonuses, stock options and capital gains through central bank financed stock buybacks. This is true, but people should realize that this is not the free market system; these are symptoms of a corrupt centrally planned system with monopoly currencies. In a real free market, no central bank would possess the capability of rigging the interest rates, debt levels and stock markets the way it now happens in the centrally planned Western economies.

After a decade of debt-fueled superficial growth, this noxious monopoly abuse has reached its terminal phase where all the harmful effects have cumulated to breaking point with problems piling up on all fronts: unprecedented levels of debt of governments, corporations and households; practical zero-growth in the West despite massive government stimulus in form of budget deficits and money printing (quantitative easing); real unemployment of catastrophic proportions (belittled through artful statistical accounting tricks); diminishing global trade and investments; stock and bond market bubbles, etc.

As a consequence of all these severe problems, the Western economies are heading for a total collapse.

Neoliberalism is something that requires a big military and a secret CIA and Mossad to enforce its wealth extraction from all countries. It is not about free trade, competition or capitalism, those are just words it uses. It is about wealth extraction for the top one percent. In order to extract that wealth for the few they must privatize everything and emasculate the state. Mr. Hellevig may be correct about war, but I hope not.

I agree with Mr Hellevig as well. The ruling elite have squandered their capitalist system to like their own pockets. Instead of spreading the climate change denial hoax, they could have been investing in solar and wind energy and been world leaders in this new technology.

I also put out the article about cold fusion a little while back but the scientists the US government used to verify it worked for rival companies and they squashed it. Now S. Korea is developing the cold fusion units to replace boilers in houses.

The ruling elite, the captains of industry, who pay themselves exceptional bonuses because of their exceptional skills, who live in an exceptional nation, are unfit for the task because of their unexceptionable performance.